We have been busy in the growing season working on tea every day.  We make mostly green tea in the earlier part of the summer and mostly black tea in the later half of the season, but don’t always stick to this.  I tend to make the tea judging from the age of the growth I am picking.

The picture is tea leaves freshly pick from the fields.  When picking, I rather grab and pluck in an uncareful manner.  I’ve described it grazing like a cow eats.  I will bring in sticks, bugs, weeds, grass and old tea leaves.  Then we sit on the floor and carefully pick through it.  It is as if we take yard clippings and turn it into a highly prized food.  We do not pick out all the little twigs as I think they add a good flavor to the finished product.  We will “string” some of the old leaves as you would a string bean but mostly we just pick them out.  In experimenting with tea over the years, I’ve found this “trash” will dry down and make a good tea, with a “woody” flavor.

We then wither this down to lose leaf moisture, roll (this batch is in the rolling machine now, as I write) then compressed in a tub to oxidize (95-105 degrees)  for three hours.  We then dry in the sun, then toast black tea (not green) in an oven for two minutes.

I caused a lot of chatter and received emails when I wrote on facebook that I did a cool wither.  I had been shown how to warm/hot wither oxidized tea by the Chinese in the 1980’s and reinforced by talking with other tea makers through out the years.   Everyone warm withered.

One day four of five years ago a certified tea taster came to visit and in her notes was a graph showing how the phenyl esterase works best around 100 degrees and another chart showing it worked best when the tea had withered down to 55% moisture.  We discussed how this was contrary to what I was doing, expecting the “blacking” to work on hot fresh leaves.  After discussing this with another tea maker I tried withering the tea in an air conditioned room, as AC is very drying.  That tea produced the richest black tea I had ever made and I never did the Chinese Solar Wither again.

Thank you for buying my book.  I am quite complimented by the kind notes I have received.

We are doing tea farm tours everyday and selling tea in our driveway everyday.  Read about making a reservation in the “Come See Us” section.

Donnie Barrett